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The Vrishabhavathi River is one of Bengaluru’s most polluted waterways. Since 2016, we have maintained sustained field presence along its course—mapping the river and its industrial corridors, and engaging with regulators, farmers, industries, and the judiciary.
In Part I, we present our work establishing the hydrological and pollution context through spatial mapping of the Vrishabhavathi Basin. We examine Pollution Control Board reports from the past decade, alongside directions from Public Interest Litigations before the High Court — including our own — all of which recommend actions to address pollution in the Vrishabhavathi. As most of these directions remain unimplemented, it is hardly surprising that both field observations and official monitoring data show the river’s worsening condition. Moreover, the river’s pollutants travel beyond the river — into our bodies, and potentially across generations — transforming river pollution into a public-health crisis. It is within this context that the State’s latest regulatory response — the ₹391-crore reboot — is critically examined.
In Part II, we analyse the structural and regulatory factors that have allowed this polluted state of the river not only to persist, but to intensify.
Contents:
- Mapping the River
- Many Directions, Little Action
- The River Worsens: Field Evidence and Government Monitoring Data
- The Invisible Pollution: What Official Data Does Not Show
- The Cycle of Poison — From River to Body, to Many Generations
- From the ₹391-Crore Reboot to Mekedatu: Engineering a Reservoir of Pollution
The Vrishabhavathi today is not a river in the conventional sense — it is an urban channel of waste and wastewater. Rising in Malleshwaram, it drains nearly half of Bengaluru, one of India’s fastest-urbanising metropolises, carrying the waste burden of a city that has grown faster than its infrastructure. The ~69 km-long river collects nearly 500 MLD of toxic wastewater along with massive quantities of solid waste from urban, industrial, and rural settlements before being impounded behind the Byramangala Dam near Bidadi. The overflow from the dam then travels another ~22 km before joining the Arkavathi near Kanakapura, which in turn meets the Cauvery at Sangama within the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary.
This is the river we have been working with and documenting since 2016. Through sustained field visits and continued engagement with the KSPCB, the CPCB, the judiciary, farmers, and urban residents, we have sought to understand the pollution crisis that has plagued this river for more than half a century — and also to examine what, if anything, can be done to address it.
Travelling across the basin, we began to understand what the river carries — and from where to where, and to whom. To communicate that understanding to citizens, bureaucrats, and policymakers, we needed spatial representation: maps that placed industries, cities, quarries, reservoirs, command areas, hydropower installations, and other human interventions within the river’s hydrological context.
Our first attempt was a hand-drawn map, which we carried to government meetings and Lokayukta proceedings. It was in the Lokayukta that we witnessed its most consequential effect. At the time, the Lokayukta was hearing nearly 200 lake pollution cases — including that of Byramangala lake on the Vrishabhavathi. Each of these lakes was considered in isolation, without hydrological context. The moment we presented Byramangala’s pollution within the context of the Vrishabhavathi river basin, pollution sources and movement became immediately legible. The Lokayukta ordered a map of Bengaluru lakes to be displayed in court as a standing reference for all cases.
Seeing how effectively the map communicated what reports alone could not, we digitised it and — having since developed GIS capacity — built it into a comprehensive, one-of-a-kind GIS-based map. It now serves as a foundational reference for all discussion, analysis, and engagement on the river’s pollution and governance — including this report.
The Vrishabhavathi’s pollution crisis has drawn the attention of regulators, citizens, and courts alike — and has generated, over the past decade, two major official assessments and two Public Interest Litigations before the High Court of Karnataka, each resulting in directions that broadly converge on the same interventions. Most remain unimplemented.
Aug 2018 CPCB Report
The first assessment came in August 2018, when CPCB, alongside KSPCB officials, conducted a joint inspection of the Vrishabhavathi, Byramangala Lake, and the downstream Arkavathi stretch following a parliamentary complaint by then-MP D.K. Suresh regarding severe pollution in the Byramangala Reservoir. Following this inspection, CPCB issued directions to KSPCB under the Water Act — calling for vigilance and flying squads to intercept illegal industrial discharges, proper functioning of STPs in apartments and industries, CETPs for industrial clusters, enforcement of rainwater harvesting and tertiary treatment reuse, prohibition of illegal plastic waste operations, regulation of poultry waste, and stronger coordination among BWSSB, BBMP, KIADB, and the Minor Irrigation Department.
Oct 2019 KSPCB Report pursuant to Lokayukta proceedings
The following year, in 2019, the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board prepared an Action Plan pursuant to Lokayukta proceedings in which we were participating. The plan acknowledged high BOD levels, widespread industrial non-compliance, inadequate sewage infrastructure, and stealth discharge of trade effluents into the valley. It proposed GPS-tracked effluent transport from industries to Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs), industry inspections, night patrolling, enhanced water quality monitoring, and a health impact study — with specified timelines and enforcement under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974. The Action Plan largely remained on paper — with the notable exception of GPS-tracked effluent transport, which was implemented.
The inclusion of night patrolling in the Action Plan was not incidental. Prior to its preparation, we had submitted detailed evidence to the Lokayukta documenting the recurring practice of industrial effluent tankers discharging waste into the river at night, and citizen pressure on the issue was building. Marshals were subsequently deployed along certain stretches of the river to monitor and intercept tanker discharges. However, this arrangement proved temporary — many marshals were reportedly underpaid or not paid at all and, as confirmed during our field visits in June 2025, they are no longer present.
Public Interest Litigation WP 9578/2020 – Challenging the ₹110-crore Vrishabhavathi River Diversion Project
As the Lokayukta’s Vrishabhavathi pollution case continued, the state government, completely unmindful of it, proceeded to execute the ₹110-crore project titled “Construction of Diversion Weir and Channel for Byramangala Reservoir, Ramanagara Taluk, Ramanagara District”. When the State Government began emptying the Byramanagala reservoir in Aug 2019 to commence work, local farmers alerted us to the development. We subsequently obtained the project’s Detailed Project Report (DPR) and understood the full scale of what was being proposed.
The project’s stated rationale, as set out in the DPR, was that the polluted Vrishabhavathi flowing into the Byramangala Reservoir had turned it into a cesspool of urban and industrial waste. The proposed solution was not to stop the pollution at source, but to prevent the river from entering the reservoir altogether by diverting its entire flow downstream through a concrete channel — effectively bypassing the reservoir entirely.
We examined the implications of this diversion proposal in a 2019 analysis piece published by SANDRP: “Brewing Farmer Crisis in Heavily Polluted, Frothing Byramangala Tank Region,”
The ₹110-crore project, formally titled “Construction of Diversion Weir and Channel for Byramangala Reservoir, Ramanagara Taluk, Ramanagara District,” proposes a 6.8 km-long, 4.25-metre-wide concrete channel to divert approximately 500 MLD of the Vrishabhavathi’s flow away from the Byramangala Reservoir and discharge it downstream into the river.
A 69-metre-long diversion weir — a small dam fitted with floodgates — would redirect the river’s flow into this 4.25-metre-wide concrete channel under normal conditions. Only during floods would water be allowed to enter the reservoir.
The project also includes ring bunding around the 19-km long reservoir’s periphery and desilting works.
Before the High Court stayed the project, about 1.9 km of the diversion channel — constructed at ~5 metres width instead of the planned 4.25 metres — along with nearly 19 km of peripheral bunding and major desilting works had already been completed.
More photos of diversion works including bunding and desilting can be found here
In effect, the State Government’s response to a river polluted by Bengaluru’s urban and industrial waste was not to stop the pollution at source — but to move it: from the Vrishabhavathi into the Arkavathi and the Cauvery, polluting them in turn.
We first engaged directly with the State Government, urging it to halt the project and implement the recommendations of the 2018 CPCB report and the 2019 KSPCB Action Plan instead, so pollution of the river could be stopped at source. When that proved ineffective, we filed Public Interest Litigation (PIL) WP 9578/2020 before the High Court of Karnataka, challenging the diversion project on the grounds that bypassing the Byramangala Reservoir would have far-reaching and irreversible pollution consequences for the Arkavathi and the Cauvery, and seeking directions for implementation of the 2018 CPCB directions and the 2019 KSPCB Action Plan to stop pollution at source.
Central to our case was evidence that the Byramangala Reservoir actively reduces the pollution load of the Vrishabhavathi, performing a natural filtration function — at no cost — that the ₹110-crore diversion project would have permanently eliminated. This natural filtration function had already been recorded by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). As part of its August 2018 report, “Report on Monitoring of Byramangala Lake Pollution with Reference to Letter from Shri D.K. Suresh, Hon’ble Member of Parliament,” CPCB collected and analysed river-water samples along the course of the river and documented the resulting water-quality profile.
As graph below shows, the CPCB’s longitudinal BOD profile of the Vrishabhavathi records an ~85% reduction in Biochemical Oxygen Demand — from 117 mg/L at the reservoir inlet at Bychohalli to 17 mg/L at the dam overflow. Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) — a broader measure of chemical pollution — recorded a reduction of approximately 75% across the same stretch.
Additionally, using KSPCB’s own monthly monitoring data, we further demonstrated that BOD levels recorded at the river inlet at Shyanumnagala show a significant reduction by the time the water reaches the reservoir outlet — as the graph below illustrates. This graph was part of our submission in the high court proceedings.
An immediate consequence of filing the PIL was the realignment of the concrete channel, which had originally been designed to pass through the centre of the reservoir. It was subsequently shifted to the periphery — though it remained within the reservoir boundary — resulting in the loss of more than ~71 acres of reservoir area. The 1.9-km diversion channel constructed so far has itself occupied another ~47 acres. In total, ~118 acres have already been lost — nearly 10% of Byramangala Reservoir’s ~1200-acre area.
But beyond the project’s design, the PIL brought to the surface a more fundamental question: whether the State even acknowledged the Vrishabhavathi as a river. The project’s official title — “Construction of Diversion Weir and Channel for Byramangala Reservoir” — made no mention of a river. As petitioners, we asserted that it was a river diversion and placed evidence before the Court. The State, in its arguments, denied this. The High Court then directed the State to file an affidavit on oath confirming that the work would not divert or change the course of the Vrishabhavathi. On oath, however, the State confirmed what it had denied in argument — that this was, in fact, a river diversion.
In its order dated 24 November 2020, the High Court stayed the project and directed the State Government to obtain expert opinion from the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI). NEERI conducted a site inspection on 18 December 2020. When we visited the project site to brief NEERI, we were attacked and driven away. We subsequently filed a complaint at the Bidadi police station.
In January 2021, NEERI submitted its report to the High Court, recommending curbing illegal industrial discharges, strengthening sewage infrastructure, preventing the entry of solid waste, and establishing constructed wetlands along the Vrishabhavathi. The Court accepted the report and directed the State to submit a plan for the timely implementation of these recommendations. To date, no such comprehensive implementation plan has been placed on record.
The stay order, it emerged, had not been honoured. Satellite imagery on Google Earth shows that construction of the diversion channel continued for months after the Court’s order of 24 November 2020 — in violation of its directions.
Public Interest Litigation WP 6961/2020 filed by Geeta Mishra
In Public Interest Litigation WP 6961/2020, filed by Geeta Mishra — in which we assisted in preparing the initial petition — CSIR-NEERI conducted a survey pursuant to the High Court’s directions. Its May 2021 report recommended a preventive, watershed-based restoration framework: stopping pollution at source, expanding treatment capacity, enforcing regulatory compliance, and structurally protecting the river and its lakes. By order dated 15 June 2021, the Court accepted the report and directed the State to implement its recommendations. Nearly five years later, substantive implementation on the ground remains poor.
Across more than a decade, official reports and court orders have recommended broadly similar interventions — most of which remain unimplemented. Taken together, they reflect official apathy, institutional inertia, and a lack of political will to address the well-documented pollution of the river. It is therefore unsurprising that our field visits conducted last year revealed a further deterioration of the river.
We present photographic documentation of the extreme pollution of the Vrishabhavathi at three locations along its course—Kumbalgodu, Shayanumangala, and Byramangala downstream. These stretches are visited frequently because they lie along heavily industrialised corridors abutting the river. In addition to the steady inflow of industrial effluents, sewage, and solid waste from Bengaluru, industrial clusters at Kumbalgodu and Bidadi contribute significant toxic loads, further compounding the river’s pollution.
i) Kumbalgodu – Industrial Area
The Vrishabhavathi River cuts through the Kumbalgodu industrial area. The Image below documents a continuous (24×7) discharge of opaque, chemical-laden black effluent from industrial units directly into the river.
Over the years, the volume and intensity of this flow has visibly increased. This discharge is not incidental or seasonal; its round-the-clock character indicates either the absence of functioning effluent treatment at source, active bypass of treatment systems, or both — each constituting a violation under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974.
The two images below show another form of disposal: industrial solid waste routinely dumped directly into the river and openly burnt along the riverbanks. Open burning releases toxic chemicals, Dioxins and Furans, into the river.
Since this water is used for irrigating food crops, these contaminants can also enter agricultural soils and crops, creating a direct pathway of human exposure. Because dioxins and furans persist in both the environment and the human body, they cause serious developmental and reproductive harm.
India currently has no specific regulatory standard for dioxin levels in water, sediments, agricultural soils, or food — leaving communities exposed to a hazard that the regulatory system does not formally recognise or measure.
ii) Shayanumangala
At Shayanumangala bridge, the river begins to widen into the Byramangala Reservoir. Near the bridge, massive amounts of solid waste accumulate, much of which is frequently set on fire.
During heavy rainfall in Bengaluru, the volume of waste reaching this stretch increases dramatically. As the river overflows the bridge, waste is deposited across the roadway, blocking traffic and triggering a severe solid-waste crisis in the village. The deposited waste is then pushed back into the river and openly burnt along the riverbanks.
Shayanumangala routinely bears the consequences of waste generated by Bengaluru and the industrial corridor upstream that cannot manage what they produce.
iii) Downstream of Byramangala Dam
Immediately downstream of the Byramangala Dam, two bridges — the old and the new — span the Vrishabhavathi. Both are routinely used as dumping points for industrial solid and liquid waste from the Bidadi industrial area, which abuts the river and Harohalli industrial area nearby.
The image shows industrial waste dumped on the bridge. Much of this waste is openly burned, as can be seen in the images
What the photographs show visually, the water quality data confirms numerically.
Official Pollution Control Board Monitoring Data
The graph below illustrates a compilation of BOD data from the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) for the period 2020–2024. KSPCB conducts monthly water quality monitoring at designated stations along the river, with 12 samples per year. In 2020, data for March is missing due to the COVID-19 lockdown; in 2021, data for May and December is missing. The datasets for 2022–2024 are complete.
The statutory permissible limit for BOD in surface water is 3 mg/L. The data shows that all samples except one exceed this limit, indicating persistent organic pollution throughout the period. BOD levels in 2024 are significantly higher than in previous years, pointing to a sharp deterioration in water quality. Among all observations, June 2023 records the highest BOD value in the dataset.
Taken together, the data reveals a worsening trend. Yet even this picture is incomplete.
KSPCB’s monitoring methodology has significant limitations: samples are collected once a month, at the most accessible point on the river, at whatever time of day a field officer arrives — what researchers call a “grab sample.” This approach captures a single moment in a river that receives continuous, round-the-clock discharge from hundreds of industrial and sewage sources. Most critically, it fails to capture nightly industrial discharges.
A year-long study by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), conducted between May 2014 and June 2015, exposed precisely this gap. ATREE researchers collected hourly composite samples over 24-hour periods and found that heavy metal concentrations, especially lead and chromium, peaked sharply between midnight and 4 am, when industries were discharging untreated effluent into the river. Their data revealed levels of heavy metals that KSPCB’s grab samples miss entirely.
It is no coincidence that the Peenya Industrial Area — a major contributor to this catchment — is classified as one of India’s severely polluted industrial clusters, with very high levels of hexavalent chromium contamination due to which KSPCB had to seal borewells in the industrial area.
Beyond heavy metals, pharmaceutical and bulk drug units, textile dyeing and washing units, electroplating facilities, chemical industries, and electronic waste processing operations release vast quantities of synthetic chemicals that resist biological breakdown and accumulate in the river and its sediment. BOD does not capture this synthetic load. Chemical Oxygen Demand, or COD, provides that broader measure — and the numbers, when measured at all, are damning.
RTI data reveals that trade effluent sampled from a tanker physically intercepted while dumping directly into the Vrishabhavathi River recorded a COD of 69,000 mg/L. To put that figure in context: any surface water body registering a COD above 25 mg/L is considered polluted, as per the 09 Mar 2018 submission to Parliament. This single tanker was carrying effluent at 2,760 times that threshold. The scale of what is routinely discharged is therefore never captured in any official record.
Adding to this burden are emerging contaminants from both treated and untreated sewage — pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), including antibiotics, anticonvulsants, antidiabetics, and PFAS. These substances are not removed by conventional sewage treatment plants. As a result, even “treated” wastewater can carry biologically active compounds into the river. A study published in Environmental Pollution(2024), based on sampling conducted in March 2018, found 125 emerging organic contaminants across Bengaluru’s water bodies — with the Vrishabhavathi River recording among the highest detections, including 39 medical and veterinary compounds and elevated antimicrobial resistance gene markers.
A 2025 study by Paani.Earth — in whose study design, execution, and data analysis we were involved — tested 65 water and 20 sediment parameters across the Vrishabhavathi and Arkavathi, covering emerging contaminants. Banned pesticides including Lindane, Heptachlor, and Endosulfan were detected in water samples. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) — generated by the incomplete combustion of organic material, including the open burning of solid waste documented along the river — were found in sediment at 3,076 times US EPA Sediment Quality Guidelines; phthalates from plastic and e-waste burning, and phenolic compounds — many of which are carcinogenic — were found across all sites, with major spikes at Shyanumangala on the Vrishabhavathi; and mercury in sediment at 26 times Canada’s Sediment Quality Guidelines. None of these appear in any KSPCB monitoring report.
The BOD data presented earlier is therefore not the full measure—it is merely the minimum that even a flawed monitoring system cannot conceal.
From river to field, from field to food, from food to body — and from body to the next generation. A cycle that does not end.
The toxic waters of the Vrishabhavathi are not confined to the river channel. They are diverted into irrigation canals and used to cultivate vegetables, paddy, baby corn, and cattle fodder in the downstream command areas.
The Byramangala Dam on the Vrishabhavathi, constructed in the 1940s for irrigation, now distributes visibly frothing toxic wastewater through an extensive canal network, irrigating at least 5,510 acres. These canals were modernised — primarily through concretisation — as recently as 2023. Further downstream, a small dam near the Rising Sun Hydropower plant again diverts water for irrigation. After the Vrishabhavathi joins the Arkavathi, the Harobele Dam near Kanakapura, commissioned in 2000, provides irrigation water to at least 15,000 acres. In addition, farmers along the river routinely pump water directly from the river for agricultural use.
Using this wastewater, farmers cultivate vegetables, fruits, paddy, mulberry (for silk), and coconut, as documented by us in Image below. Fodder grown with the same water feeds cattle whose milk enters the Nandini supply chain — Karnataka’s largest dairy cooperative and the primary source of milk for millions of households across Bengaluru and the state. Chemicals such as dioxins and heavy metals — cadmium, lead, and chromium — migrate from wastewater into soil, and from soil into milk and crops, particularly vegetables.
Across nearly two decades, multiple independent studies have documented this contamination pathway. A 2008 market survey found cadmium, lead, chromium, and nickel in vegetables at levels exceeding safe limits for human consumption. A 2020 study reported toxic concentrations of chromium, nickel, cadmium, and lead. These findings were reinforced by the 2022 study and subsequent CPCB study — together establishing a long-recognised and persistent pathway from wastewater irrigation to the food chain.
Once these vegetables enter Bengaluru’s markets, they are bought, cooked, and eaten — allowing heavy metals to migrate from food to body and accumulate over time, damaging the liver and kidneys, impairing neurological development, disrupting hormones, and increasing cancer risk. Some cross the placental barrier, transmitting these chemicals from the mother to the unborn — within the womb. Once born, the child is exposed again — through breast milk.
The heavy metals that enter the body stay there — and they stay in the environment too. They do not simply disappear. They do not biodegrade into harmless substances. The pollutants we fear most — radioactive materials — at least decay over time. Their hazard slowly diminishes, even if over geological timescales. Uranium, the material we most associate with long-term environmental danger, has a half-life of approximately 4.5 billion years. Heavy metals offer no such consolation. They do not break down. They do not lose potency. Once released into the environment, they remain — circulating through water, settling into soil, entering crops, accumulating in bodies, and persisting across generations.
This is the cycle of poison. It has no endpoint. This is the reality the government’s ₹391-crore ‘reboot’ refuses to confront.
Even as the river’s condition continues to worsen, vegetables grown on its waters remain poisoned, and recommendations from State and Central pollution control boards — along with court directions — remain unimplemented, the State Government’s December 2025 announcement of a ₹391-crore “reboot” of the Byramangala Reservoir reveals a fundamental disconnect from pollution reality. The sole exception — the construction of large sewage treatment plants in the upper reaches of the river in Bengaluru — has done little to address pollution. The reboot proposes an additional sewage treatment plant, large-scale desilting of the Byramangala Reservoir, river diversion works, and reservoir embankment — none of which address the source of the problem.
This is, in effect, the very project challenged in our petition WP 9578/2020, as discussed earlier—for which a stay has been in force since 2020—now repackaged as a “reboot,” with the addition of a new STP. With the proposed development of the Bidadi Satellite Township, there is clear administrative momentum to cosmetically clean the area. As with the earlier project, pollution would again be diverted downstream rather than stopped at source. The very natural filtration that the 2018 CPCB Report documented—85% BOD reduction & 75% COD reduction—would be engineered out of existence.The Byramangala reservoir will be filled with treated wastewater from the STP and positioned as a recreational amenity for the township, while the river—and the toxic waste it carries—will be confined to a channel lined with revetment walls, hidden.
We understand why this is being done this way. Enforcement—the foundation of pollution prevention and control—is, in our experience, an intractable problem for the government. If not impossible, it is nearly so. In such a situation, pollution is not prevented and controlled, as mandated under the Water Act; it is geographically rearranged, as is the case here.
When pollution is redirected downstream bypassing the reservoir—to Kanakapura and to the farmers in the Harobele dam command area—it becomes injustice. They are burdened with a problem they did not create, whose magnitude they may not fully grasp, and for which they have the least capacity to seek redress.
Sending it further into the Cauvery merely buys time. Even as pollution flows downstream, politicians and policymakers have spent the better part of the last decade building pro-dam public opinion around the Mekedatu Dam, proposed downstream of Sangama, where the Arkavathi — carrying the Vrishabhavathi’s waste — joins the Cauvery. The Cauvery itself has been classified as a polluted river stretch by the CPCB. When the dam is built, this polluted water would stagnate, concentrate, and settle, accumulating the heavy metals, pesticides, and persistent chemicals documented in this report.
A globally recognised tech metropolis like Bengaluru, racing to secure its place in the AI era yet unable to manage its own waste, would effectively engineer a reservoir of pollution — and then draw from it to drink.
The profound irony is this: the extinction of the Mahseer would unfold inside a Wildlife Sanctuary — a space created and designated under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, precisely to protect it from exactly these threats. The Mahseer, as a flagship species — the most visible and most vulnerable — stands here for all the wildlife the sanctuary was meant to protect: from the otters in the river, to the birds, to the elephants, leopards, and countless other species of the forest — whose fate is bound to the same water, the same river, the same failures.
Our false “solutions” either push today’s burden onto the weak — human and non-human alike — or defer it to the unseen generations of tomorrow. Even where no solution is attempted and the status quo holds, the burden falls silently on our bodies, on the unborn. It falls, as it always has, on those who did not create this crisis and cannot escape it.
In the face of pollution of this scale and complexity, the only defensible policy direction is prevention — stricter enforcement and accountability at source. But enforcement alone is insufficient without a fundamental shift in how politicians, policymakers, and the public relate to rivers: away from the logic of extraction — building more dams, drawing more water, treating rivers as drains for the city’s waste — and towards the logic of restoration, recognising rivers as living systems whose health is inseparable from our own.
Instead, the current regulatory environment, shaped by a strong administrative philosophy of “ease of doing business,” is moving in the opposite direction: diluting existing safeguards, relaxing consent and inspection regimes, and reducing compliance burdens on the very industries driving this crisis. How deregulation is accelerating the collapse of what little remains — and what it means for the Vrishabhavathi — is the subject of Part II.
Notes:
1. Flow volume, Vrishabhavathi River: Figures vary across assessments. The CPCB (2018) documented approximately 500 MLD; the NEERI report (May 2021) recorded 576 MLD.
2. Byramangala Reservoir area: The ~1,200-acre extent is drawn from the Byramangala Diversion Channel DPR.
3. This report draws on a decade of fieldwork, documentation, and advocacy carried out between 2016 and March 2026 across Bangalore Environment Trust, Paani.Earth, and Mapping Malnad.
